Tuesday, October 14, 2014

This park
is situated in the northern region, close to the border of Namibia. The camp is
on the plateau high above the falls themselves with reception, restaurant and
shop in the main building with wonderful viewing platforms over the falls.

Seeing the 56m
waterfall in full flood was an exceptional experience. No wonder the Khoi
people called it ‘Aukoerebis’, or place of Great Noise.

This is
part of the Orange River and the gorge through which it flows is 18kn in
length.

The
landscape is very rocky and arid but if you love walking/hiking, there are three
wonderful trails to take, each a different length. Then again, as there are no animals
in the park which can harm you, strike out on your own just don’t get lost!

The region seems
barren except for the eye catching sentinels which are Quiver Trees

but on closer inspection, there is a whole host of wonderful
flowering plants and shrub with thousands of beautiful butterflies and insects.

At the Falls themselves, you find the Augrabies Flat Lizard
which is endemic there.

On a drive, many animals are to be seen such as
Klipspringer, Hyrax, Giraffe, Tortoise and a host of buck species.

Some of the highlights along the way are: Moon
Rock, Swart Rante, Echo Corner, Oranjekom and Ararat viewpoints.

Along the way, you are sure to see various species of lizards
which all survive in this harsh climate.

Vegetation may be scarce but you are sure to see many
species of Euphorbia’s and the Shepherd’s Tree which has many uses and
medicinal properties.

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

This is one
of the most stunning places I have been to and lies in an almost spoilt region
in the northern part of the Eastern Cape at the mouth of the Mpako River. If you are looking for tranquillity,
great hikes and lazing in the sun on the beach, this is the place to go.

Asking
a local tour guide, a young man of about 20, what the old people say formed the
Hole-in-the-wall he said “They say there was something like a tsunami in the
river and a lot of things were brought down by this and made the mountain
disappear so it could get to the sea.” :)

Another
legend says
it refers to a young maiden who fell in love with one of the mythical ‘sea
people’. Such was the love of this sea person for the maiden that he and his
people rammed a hole in the side of a lagoon wall with the help of a huge fish
so they could reach her; she was never heard from again.

The whole
region is one of high hills with forests in the ravines with the Umdoni tree
forming a large part of the vegetation. This tree has very edible berries and
the local people love to eat them.

You can spend
the whole day (or three) walking along the fantastic coastline. Everywhere you
turn, the vista is spectacular.

The
Hole-in-the-Wall is an archway carved out of the sandstone by wave action. The
tour guide tells me that you can walk almost up to the cave during low tide and
at high tide on clam days, people swim out and climb to the top of the rocks
and jump into the sea – an activity NOT recommended as people have lost their
lives doing this.

In one area a
deep cliff has been cut into the rocks and with the waves hitting the walls,
make a spectacular scene for photography.

The beaches
are safe for swimming so bring lots of suntan lotion if visiting in summer. The
weather in the region is fairly mild in winter so can be visited then too.

Having
extolled the beauty of the place, I must add that this is not an easy place to
get to for anyone, let alone overseas tourists

Going south
about 40km from Umtata, there is a turnoff to Coffee Bay. Although the first
70km is tarred, it takes at least 2 hours to get there as the road is very
twisty and your average speed is slow. Besides this, there are no fences in
that area so the roads are filled with goats, sheep, cattle, pigs, horses and
donkeys which you have to watch out for. The last 10km to Coffee Bay is gravel
and besides some road works going on there, not bad. From the Bay, it is
another 9km to the Hole-in-the-wall and this is a very bad stretch. An ordinary
car will struggle with the uphills on this unpaved road as there are at times
large rocks and fissures which is impossible to get through unless you have a
4x4. Once there though, one’s jaw drops at the sheer beauty of it all.

There are a few places to stay at: 2
backpackers, a small resort with hotel and a B&B, some places catered and
others accommodation only so they cater for all budgets. Prices are reasonable
at all of these. The hotel has a small shop where one can buy the odd
refreshment and a shop of sort selling necessary items such as coffee, sugar,
bread etc but one must take your own food if not being catered for at your
accommodation.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

We humans are relatively recent arrivals on Earth. But our ancestors have been here for millions of years.

Our ancestors are called “hominids”. The oldest hominid discovered so far is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, from Chad, which is about 7-million years old. This fossil has been nicknamed “Toumai” in the local Goran language. There are also several very old species that have been discovered in Kenya and Ethiopia.While the exact shape of the human family tree is something scientists are still debating, the one thing that they mostly agree on is that humankind was born here in Africa.

In the Cradle of Humankind, about 1,000 hominid fossils have been discovered, spanning several million years.

The oldest hominid fossils from the Cradle are more than 3-million years old and belong to the genus Australopithecus. There were many species or types of Australopithecus, which lived in Eastern and Southern Africa.

“Mrs Ples”, the famous fossil of a skull of an Australopithecus africanus, was discovered at the Sterkfontein Caves by palaeontologists Dr Robert Broom and John Robinson in 1947. “Mrs Ples” is about 2.1-million years old. In 1997, palaeontologist Professor Ron Clarke and his assistants Stephen Motsumi and Nkwane Molefe, discovered the full skeleton of an Australopithecus inside the Sterkfontein Caves, encased in breccia, a type of rock. This skeleton, called “Little Foot”, is still being excavated.

Note: There is a big controversy going on concerning Mrs. Ples. They now believe that it should actually be Mr. Ples as the hip and eyebrow structure give indications of this.

After Australopithecus came the genus Homo, to which we humans, Homo sapiens, belong. The earliest named Homo species is Homo habilis or “handy man”, which researchers believe made the first stone tools. Homo habilis emerged about 2-million years ago. After Homo habilis came, among others, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo floresiensis and Homo Sapiens – us.

These species lived in different parts of the world. Not all Homo species were direct ancestors of humans.

The human family tree has many branches, several of which broke off as species became extinct.

Modern humans, Homo sapiens, emerged only about 200,000 years ago. While older species of Homo, such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis, lived in Asia and Europe mostly, scientists believe that modern humans, like our most distant ancestors such as Toumai and the australopithecines, evolved here in Africa.

The oldest fossil evidence for modern humans discovered so far comes from Ethiopia and South Africa.

I do apologize for the quality of these photographs again as everything is behind glass and extremely difficult to photograph.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

We were
very excited about going to Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park and left Upington very
early to make the 3 hour drive there. I had not been there for about 20 years
and remembered it as a terrific place to be. At the time of making the booking,
we could only get camping at Twee Rivieren but when we arrived, we were told
there is place at Mata Mata and we gladly changed some of our first days for
it.

What a huge
disappointment!! According to their website, most of the roads are said to be
accessible to vehicles like mine but they were so bad that we had to drive not
more than 20km/ph and so bumpy, it took us hours to get there. About the only
thing we saw along the way was a lion laying hidden by some bushes, a few
Gemsbok and some Wildebeest.

Mata Mata itself is totally run down although it looks like they are building a new ablution block. They had some rain there a week before we arrived and when we went to ask, were told their grader was not working and they did not know when they would fix the roads again. Typical darn government owned place!!

We once
again changed our bookings for Twee Rivieren as the roads there had not been as
bad as further north. SO the next morning, back down we went!! After three very
bad days where we were basically restricted to going only to the first watering
hole about 5kms away, we went to ask them if they could change our booking to
some other camp such as Augrabies, Addo or Mountain Zebra as it did not us much
good not being able to go anywhere. We were not very politely told that they
could not and that if we wanted to leave, we would lose the money we had paid
for the other 4 days we were going to stay!! When I questioned the conditions
of the roads and mentioned that it said vehicles like mine could go on them, I
was told that their website now said 4x4 vehicles only!! Even the people there
WITH 4x4’s were complaining!! So my advice is: DO NOT GO TO KGALAGADI!!

The only
thing worth seeing at Mata Mata was the Yellow Mongoose digging for food in the
camping area. The rest of the area was a total waste of time!

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Leaving
Mountain Zebra and going to Upington on our way to Khalagadi Transfrontier Park,
we passed through the small town of Prieska and found this beautiful miniature prickly
pear along the road. As beautiful as it looks, it is unfortunately and invasive
species.

We stayed
for two days at the caravan park in Upington trying to catch up on our computer
work and the first night had a very dramatic sunset.

It was nice
to just laze around for a while and got to do the shopping for food we needed
to take with us to Kgalagadi where there are no nearby shops.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

These were behind glass and I had to use the camera's flash - please excuse the glare of it in the photographs. Our world was born in a ball of burning gas 4.6-billion years ago, in a universe that is about 14-billion years old. Over time it cooled, the early atmosphere formed, and the first land masses appeared.

The first life forms, which were like the black algae you sometimes see in swimming pools today, emerged about 3.8-billion years ago.

The history of life on Earth has been rocked by five major extinctions. The last great extinction was 65-million years ago, when the dinosaurs were wiped out, probably after a giant meteor slammed into the Earth off the coast of Mexico, and set off volcanic eruptions all over the world, changing the global climate. Today, some scientists say we are in the midst of the sixth major extinction – and its cause is us.

We know about species which have populated our Earth before us by studying fossils. Fossils are the remains of plants or animals which have been turned into stone over a long period of time in a process known as “mineralisation”.

Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, was one of the first people to express a theory of evolution – the idea that species change over time, as they adapt to changing environments.